Consider the Lilies

She could not have known when the lily cuttings she brought to the office that day would unfold.  She could not have known what memories and emotions the perfume of the lilies would unfasten. She could not have known the depth of conversation the beauty of the lilies would unfurl. She simply shared the flowers from her garden as an act of kindness and hoped they would be a blessing.

I walked into the office earlier than usual on Thursday morning July 16^th and was struck by a familiar fragrance. “The lilies must have opened,” I thought to myself.  It was a strong fragrance. It caught me off guard at first and I felt uneasy though I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.

We were chatting over coffee in the breakroom before patients arrived when Stephanie commented on the flowers. She noticed their splendor as she walked in the front door of our office. I breathed in their aroma and told her a patient had shared them from her garden. In the next breath I recounted how lilies always reminded me of death.  My son’s death.  I explained without much emotion that we received so many flowers from loving friends and family around that time, and that lilies were invariably among them and tended to overpower any of the other flowers’ fragrances. Funny how the sense of smell is uniquely wired to memory.

“Remind me again when Sammy died,” Stephanie spoke with the empathy of someone who knows the pain and sorrow that motherhood often brings in one form or another. I stared into space just for a second recollecting the day.

“Twenty-three years ago on the 16^th of July,” I answered meekly in utter disbelief that I might have let the day pass without acknowledging my child’s death and therefore his life. If it were not for the lilies.

Guilt taunted me. The guilt of not feeling the pain of grief. As if I should be carrying grief around like a badge of courage and crying on this day represented the pain and not letting go of pain made me a better person, holier, somehow. But I didn’t feel the need to cry right then. Of course, I had not forgotten, and I could never forget. Sammy, my firstborn son, my sweet boy, my treasure in heaven. And the wrestling gave way to wonder. The wonder of God’s love in a fragrance. The wonder of time and space. The wonder of the simplest of gestures, the giving of flowers.

I thanked God for His intimate ways. I thanked him for my patient and her kindness.  She could not have known, I thought again.

God wanted to do more than remind me of Sammy’s day.  “Consider the lilies”, He was saying, “How they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin.” He wanted to remind me how he had grown me through ups and down, sorrows and joys, with His redeeming ways.  I did not have to spin.  I did not have to hold on to pain for the sake of holding on. And it didn’t necessarily mean I had  “worked through it” or “was over it.” As if it had to be either or. It just meant I was where I was. In process.

It was a perfectly balmy day. The sun shone through the neighbor’s scrub oaks which shade the back yard at the office. Stephanie and I shared lunch under clear blue skies at the picnic table that Zeke built.  We talked about the seeming paradoxes that we encounter in life and the black and white/either-or scenarios that did not make sense anymore. “Maybe, with God, there is room for both and…”  

And I gave myself permission to sit there with both and.Both pain and healing. Both sorrow and joy. Both unrest and peace.

Consider the lilies. Consider the both and…